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Tuesday, October 5, 2010

No Vacancies Blog Tour: Lucien Black Guest Post

It’s day 2 of Lucien Black’s take-over! So, here he is!

I am so happy to be here on Not-Really-Southern Vamp Chick’s blog. Thanks for giving me some time to reach out to your followers.

Let me introduce myself, my name is Lucien Black, author of the Speculative Fiction Series, No Vacancies. I’ve been writing since 1989 and the lifelong dream was to be a published author with multiple properties in print. Finally, in 2008, after many re-writes, I published my first book, No Vacancies Volume 1 and this has been a fantastic journey. I’m here to introduce you to my works and hope that you will take this journey with me as well.

The concept of No Vacancies started with a profound love for all things comic book related. My early writing aspirations including becoming a regular writer of a comic book series. I attempted to break into the industry, but always found that the doors were closed. For those of you unfamiliar with the comic space, the industry is very tough and breaking in can be an insurmountable task. Artists journey from convention to convention, hoping for two minutes in front of an editor that will catch a glimpse of their work and give them a shot. Writers have a much harder time, since an editor does not have the time to read a script or a summary, while perusing portfolio after portfolio of artists. Eventually, I continued writing, but found myself writing for my own benefit rather than to seek publication.

Eventually, my wife challenged me to adapt a different style of writing to my scripts and convert them into short stories. I argued at first, but eventually found myself slipping easily into this new routine. What I needed was an idea that would convey the type of story I wanted to write, but for a while new medium. Taking some cues from the old movie serials, comic books and the old pulp magazines, I developed the concept of No Vacancies.

Two volumes of No Vacancies are released each year and each book contains four short stories. At times, the stories are stand alone, or appear only in the one volume of No Vacancies. These are ideas or concepts that I felt I needed to convey, but were not necessarily part of a bigger series or story. The first volume of No Vacancies contains a story called “One More Sunday”, which tells the tale of the events which led up to the death of the city’s primary superhero. In this noir thriller, Detective Sam Arkwright finds himself wrapped up in a case that is beyond his imagination and takes him to the edge and back as he uncovers not only how the Protector died, but secrets hidden away long ago but the reclusive superhero.

The other stories contained in the series are serialized or episodic tales, told over multiple volumes of the No Vacancies series. So, each volume of the series, contains a part or episode of the titled story. Outcast, for example, starts in No Vacancies Volume 1 and ends in No Vacancies Volume 4, with some heavy cliffhanger endings along the way.

With what I have in my writing repertoire, I expect there to be somewhere around fifteen volumes in the No Vacancies series and that is if I stop developing new series along the way. Already, I’ve jumped from 12 to 15 volumes, based on new ideas, characters or stories I wish to tell.

Starting in Volume 4, I introduce a new episodic series called Myth, which I expect to run over volumes 4-8. The next installment, Volume 5, introduces a superhero series called Seven. Seven tells the story of a superhero team that has fallen by hard times. Between character deaths and real- life challenges, the team is in utter chaos at a time when they are needed most.

Down the line, I see another installment of the Outcast series, picking up from where the story ends in Volume 4. There are some major challenges ahead for the characters of the Outcast series. I won’t give too much away, but expect a new villain even more ruthless than Adrian Vandenberg. The romance between Nathaniel and Detective Jackie Thompson will also start to see some light in the second installment of the Outcast story.

My first foray into the Fantasy genre will be coming soon as well. The Smokey Tower, told over multiple volumes, introduces my take on wizardry and the fantastical creatures and races found in traditional fantasy novels. Much like the horror elements of Outcast, I want to create a story with unique twists on old themes. I want readers to jump into these stories and feel familiar yet wildly unfamiliar with the concepts and ideas.

Along the way, future installments of No Vacancies will also have several stand-alone short stories, all combining elements from multiple genres and should promise for a continued wild ride.